Assessing the sociology of sport: On changing masculinities and homophobia

Abstract

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a leading international scholar on masculinities and sport, Eric Anderson, assesses developments in the field by focusing on changing masculinities and homophobia studies within the sociology of sport. Anderson reflects on how early understandings about sport’s social roles were anchored in moral panics over homosexuality in companion with the growth of industrialization. In his assessment, Anderson considers how the work of Connell and others on ‘hegemonic masculinity’ reseated thinking about masculinities and their dynamic in sporting cultures. In response to the challenges of masculinities and homophobia in sport studies, Anderson situates the development of an inclusive masculinity theory that posed that the historical situation and social factors concerning homophobia in sport were beginning to change in ways that serve to secure and broaden understandings of masculinity. Noting research centred in the Western sporting cultures and focusing on white men, Anderson sees future needs for research examining the intersection of decreasing homophobia according to race, geography, age and other confounding variables.